Celluloid doll repair

This is a very large celluloid doll who has arrived to get it's arm fixed.

The inside of the arm that holds the elastic has broken out.

This is the other arm showing how the broken area used to look.
Recreating this in the broken arm will take some inventiveness!

After plan #1 with a metal washer was not working out, I have arrived at plan #2.
This involves using the bottom cut out of a plastic bottle with a hole drilled into it, a plastic washer from the hardware store and the toggle that the previous handy-person had used on the doll.

The altered bottle bottom gets epoxied into the arm.

Once the epoxy adhesive is cured, epoxy sculpting clay can reshape the socket.

The toggle and washer get put back on to the end of the elastic and then, with breath held, The elastic knot and toggle get stuffed into the new socket.

It worked!

Restringing a Gotz doll

This is a Gotz doll who has arrived for re-stringing.

Her elastic has lost it's sprung and she is very floppy.

Here is the elastic as it goes into her head.

And here is the elastic as it goes into one of her limbs.

Once you heat the area with a hairdryer to soften the plastic it is easier to extract the bits.
The limb insert looks like this once extracted.

And the head bits look like this.

Here she is deconstructed.
She has new elastic in place ready to attach her head and legs.

All done and hair combed.

An unusual early composition doll

This doll arrived in a ziplock bag.
He is leaking sawdust from many areas.

He has an interesting composition head on a cloth body with composition lower arms.

He is likely from the early 1900's.

He has a sheepskin wig glued over molded and painted hair. The wig looks original to him.

His head is split up both sides.

I don't want to remove the wig as it is solidly glued and old sheepskin is fragile.  So I shall have to fix his head while working around the wig.

Wood glue gets injected into the cracked head seam and he gets clamped.

Then epoxy putty is used to fill in crevices and mold a replacement corner of his shoulderplate that was missing.

The repaired seams get painted to blend in with the existing finish.

It is hard to see in the photos but he has original black features painted around his mouth and nose. Were they meant to depict facial hair?

The cloth of his original body was shredding so he has a new body covering. His original sawdust was saved and put back.

Then he gets an outfit made of antique and vintage fabrics.